


And An Echo Murmured Back

by mistalagan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-01
Updated: 2012-04-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 21:16:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistalagan/pseuds/mistalagan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lenore, just before the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And An Echo Murmured Back

Lenore's kinda young, for a vampire. Janet told her, way back in sixty-nine, way back when it all started; "You're a child 'til your first century, at least. Children make mistakes," which is why Janet just laughed when she took her vow. Patted her on the back and said, "Sure, whatever. You'll taste your first cow and come back around soon enough. Wait and see."

Janet had been her friend, she'd thought, and she'd been the one driving. Lenore hates driving, even now—when she'd been first turned, she'd thought it must have been fate, that she'd died (half-died, she guesses) in an auto accident. That the stab of sunlight on chrome would end up hurting her, really hurting, instead of just sliding into her eyes and setting off the light, sick feeling, and the sweat salting leather and denim, and the high and distant jet-plane whine between her ears.

It had felt like that when she'd turned - only instead of her own heart dragging along its steady rhythm she could hear the paramedics', two of them on the lonely midnight road, the smell of their sweat, the light in their eyes blinking on and off with the emergency flashers. Instead of her blood trickling from her split lip, theirs hot on her fingers; not her boyfriend's warm voice encouraging her to keep going, but Janet's, coaxing her lips down to press shakily against their shuddering dark throats.

After that, she'd thrown up on the side of the road while Janet lit a cigarette and blew smoke that drifted over and teased the back of her neck. "You'll be okay, sweetheart," she'd said, "I picked you for a reason, hun, it comes as a shock but I'm here to take care of you. Y'ain't gonna be alone."

"Wrong sort of hippie," Pete had growled when he'd seen her first trailing along after Janet, "she'll break your heart, Jan, just you wait and see." And Lenore had wanted to protest that she wasn't a hippie, not at all, she was a good girl and tame and quiet, but Janet'd shushed her and shrugged and told Pete to fuck off.

And Pete would've thought it was hilarious, the way she is now, but Pete's dead and Janet's dead and everyone they knew - Conrad, too, Tammy, Alan. And Eli, her family, her nest, all gone. The basement is cold. The walls are closing in, she can feel them, she can hear the whisper of the beetles in the long grass above that don't have blood but do have hearts that tremble in counterpoint to the vast and slow creep of the sap in the trees they cling to. She smells the echo of the rats she devoured whole weeks ago, the hint of animal fear still lingering in the air. Or is that hers?

And through it all, her Mother whispers, calm and soothing as anyone before; come to me, come to me, child, you don't have to be alone.


End file.
